


This Salted Earth

by 1PB2PB3PB4



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Immortal Max Rockatansky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1PB2PB3PB4/pseuds/1PB2PB3PB4
Summary: He’s not sure what he is, but he’s not like anyone else. So he figured he’d try his luck out on the salts.“I guarantee that 160 days ride that way is nothing but salt.”It’s a fact he can guarantee.Snapshots from Fury Road from the POV of an immortal (and old) Max.
Kudos: 71





	This Salted Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Life Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21359392) by [melody_dramatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melody_dramatic/pseuds/melody_dramatic). 



> I love the idea of an Immortal Max- especially a Max that is far older than everyone else and actually remembers pre-apocalypse life. And after rewatching Fury Road I wanted to write this. It's very short, but I just wanted to write something as opposed to going anything in depth.
> 
> Don't own fury road, and hope you enjoy reading this.
> 
> Was inspired by melody_dramatic's "Life Blood".

He’s been on the road for many days. He doesn’t count the days anymore, though enough have passed that he feels that he should be older.

He’s not.

A faint roaring in his ears alert him to the presence of scavengers, road warriors.

_Trouble_.

It’s not good being on the same road as anyone else.

He throws his things into his car and takes off. There are too many of them, the car rolls.

He rolls. He thinks his neck might have snapped. He thinks it _ought_ to have snapped.

That’s the thing, he’s not sure if his body just doesn’t break, or if it fixes itself. Or if he’s just got good bones. Can he not die? Or can he not be killed? Or is it he’s just not dead _yet_.

(If he’s _just_ got good bones, he’d eat his hat- not that he has a hat.)

Then he’s chained to their car, and he’s running behind it.

This does not bode well.

* * *

He sees the warboys holding up a symbol, red hot with the heat, and he feels his spirit rise up within him.

He might have let them etch into his back like a book, but he will not let them brand him like an animal.

He’s running through the tunnels within this mountain, he doesn’t know where he’s going, doesn’t really care. They plague him, the ones he didn’t save, as he’s running. But he manages to get away anyway when they try to grab him again.

Suddenly he’s in sunlight. He stops, the drop below is dizzying, and there’s nowhere to go. The hook in front of him dangles like a carrot from a stick, and it feels like a bad idea. There is nowhere else to go. He leaps.

After all, he doubts he wouldn’t survive that fall.

But surviving the fall is one thing, getting out of the citadel is another. He’d rather this lot didn’t know anything about him, them knowing that his body always seems to put itself back to rights seems like a bad idea.

Besides, it’s a long fall. Max doesn’t want to know what happens if he’s wrong.

He’s tagged, and bagged and locked up in a cave. High-octane blood they say. He hopes it poisons every last one of them.

* * *

He’s strapped to the roof of his car like some kind of ornament, and the Warboy driver is wearing his jacket.

His car, his jacket, his blood, they’re taking it all, piece by piece, until he’s got nothing left to give.

Except his life. Though he’s not sure if that’s something he _can_ give.

They’re following the big vehicle, the War Rig, they had called it. Max couldn’t really care less about what petty squabble is emerging within the factions of Immortan Joe’s empire.

Then one of the warboys on a different car, has been hit, and is swaying as he sprays something on his face, screaming. The two in his car start screaming too as the man throws himself onto the Buzzard’s car and a fireball ensues.

It’s difficult to wrap his head around, this group out here in the wasteland. While most of them are desperately trying to cling onto life these warboys are frantically chasing death.

Where did it go wrong?

Next thing he knows he’s being moved to the back of the car, and he tenses waiting for his chance.

The Warboy has a knife though, he’s willing to use it.

Max has no desire to get stabbed. He lets himself be moved to the back of the car, more opportunities will arise there, he’s sure.

He knocks the Warboy off the back of his car, his boot is taken in the process, and yet more things he has had to give.

That’s one problem dealt with. Now he just has the one sitting at the wheel.

The one driving into a sand storm.

No one with sense drives into a sandstorm. If you’re unlucky enough to find yourself in a sandstorm, you cover up, and you shield.

The Warboy is inside the car, and he winds everything shut before Max can get any purchase _and_ he’s wearing goggles.

He has nothing. His face ought to be sandblasted off his skull. His airways should choke on the fine particles of dust in the air. His eyes should be scratched and blinded. Instead Max just tries to use the car itself as a shield from the worst of the storm.

All around him cars are being lifted, and people are being cast into the air like paper dolls in the breeze.

The warboy is fiddling with valves and levers inside the car, and it is confusing.

The fuel is flowing out. What a waste.

Then Max notices the can of paint, as the Warboy turns around, a manic grin on his face.

“Witness me, Bloodbag!” he shouts, flare glowing red, a beacon in the storm, clutched in his outstretched hand.

No.

Max has no desire to be in an explosion. No desire for his car to be blown up, his jacket shredded to smithereens.

Maybe him shredded to smithereens too.

Desperation powers him as he breaks the windscreen, and pulls on the chain, desperately trying to reach the flare.

The car flips, and rolls, and everything goes black.

* * *

He awakens covered in sand, still chained to the war boy, who in turn is chained to the car.

The gun does not work, and he is forced to carry both the car door and the warboy. He takes the gun anyway. He can be the only one who knows it is flawed.

Surrounding the war rig are women, one in particular who is holding a hose. A quick look suggests only one serious threat, the one with the missing arm- amputated his brain tells him.

They still out number him, but he holds a gun, and has caught them unawares.

One of the women cuts something fanged and vicious off another, and his heart soars as he sees the bolt cutters.

He has no desire to continue to lug around the rotting corpse of a Warboy, and he bears these women no ill will, but they have water, and a car, and a search party looking for them.

He is not a good man. The woman with the short hair, and black paint, the driver of the rig is like him in that way. She will take the first chance she can get to put him down.

He has to leave her here.

She attacks. She is a good fighter, but he’s stronger. He’s also heavy, and the other women can’t drag him away.

Then the warboy wakes up, and Max loathes him, but he proves himself to be a good ally, mistakenly believing Max is on his side.

He is not a good man, but in another life he swore to protect the people. He has killed people, but Max Rockatansky refuses to kill someone who just wants to survive in cold blood.

He fires 3 warning shots into the ground beside her head. The waste of bullets worth it to make his point _very_ clear.

Once he is separated from the Warboy he punches him in the stomach, winding him, and takes off in the rig. He’ll leave him to their tender mercies.

The rig starts slowing down, the engines shutting off, and he’s confused and trying to work out the problem. Once he sees the women slowly approaching him from the distance though, he understands and groans

“Kill-switches” she says. It’s a smart move, and one he credits her for.

She refuses to leave the women behind. It’s not a smart move, but it’s one he credits her for still.

The fuel pod is dragging, and when Max returns from fixing it there is a new friend in the cab.

The warboy is tossed unceremoniously from the rig, and he can’t help but hope they have seen the last of him.

He doubts it, and fiddles with the tubing still containing his blood connected to his neck with some unease.

* * *

They are crying, and begging for him to go back. He ignores them, and instead turns to Furiosa, who will better understand the harsh reality.

“She went under the wheels,” he repeats. Angharad is dead, whether or not she still breathes at this moment, she is dead.

Back before he’d seen people go under the wheels of trucks, it hadn’t been pretty, and sometimes they even lived for a bit.

This isn’t before.

He will not sacrifice the rest of them so they can better grieve.

The ghosts haunt him, they should not think him one who does not understand the pain of another’s death.

She was not like him. She went under the wheels. She was gone.

* * *

“He means the tree,” Capable tells Furiosa.

Trees are few and far between these days, it doesn’t surprise Max that Nux doesn’t know what they are, or lacks the words to say it.

In fact he’s more surprised to see a tree.

He remembers when they were all around though. He remembers lots of things, things that no one else seems to. Things that other people seem to have only heard of in stories. Maybe he is just mad, maybe these memories are just stories he believes to be true.

He has a hard enough time staying within the real these days.

They get the truck free, they’re still being shot at. They can’t stay here. If Furiosa can get the rig and the rest a little further down the track it should be safe to let the engines cool.

If Max runs interference. He’s not like the rest of them, the wives wouldn’t know what to do, Furiosa and Nux are needed to keep the rig going to where it needs to be. He’s tough, resilient too.

Max is not by nature a violent man, but he lives in this wasteland. Preferring to run does not mean that he can’t fight. That his body can take a beating just means he fights better.

“What if you’re not back by the time the engines have cooled?” she asks him, concern on her face.

Max almost laughs at it. Furiosa is not naïve or innocent, but the question is. It’s odd running into someone who still cares, cares about him, about anyone beyond themselves to the extent that they’d jeopardise themselves. The answer is simple, and there’s only one to give.

They have to keep going.

With or without him. He’s not like the rest of them. He will be fine alone on the road.

Besides, he doesn’t tell her. If he’s not back by the time the engines have cooled, they have bigger problems.

None of the bullets hit him as he walks over, menace of the road, phantom of the night, but many come close.

Bullets seem to dodge him.

It’s bloody, and it’s brutal, and it’s short. The bullet-farmer is blind, and his lackeys are inexperienced.

There is only one of him, but all they are armed with are bullets. Max has the ghosts of those he failed to save spurring him on, and the luck of the devil on his shoulder.

Soon enough the desert around him is quiet, and he gathers up his spoils before jogging back to the rig.

Toast asks him if he is injured and he doesn’t understand. He can’t remember when he was last injured. He doesn’t answer, hoping she’ll clarify what she means.

“it’s not his blood,” he hears Furiosa tell her in an aside. Oh, the blood.

There’s innocence still in these women, and he’s not sure if it’s a good thing, if it’s something that they should try and keep. But it’s refreshing.

For someone to see him covered in blood, and to think- is he okay, not what Furiosa and Nux see- that a group of men died bloody and violent and the cause was Max.

Soon enough Nux comes to tell them that the engines are cooled and they’re on the road once more.

* * *

He’s seen a lot, he’s seen good people gone bad, he’s seen what desperation does.

He’s seen traps, and bait and walked into them knowing or otherwise.

The naked woman screaming in the tower is bait, if the fact that she was a naked woman screaming in a tower that she clearly got into wasn’t clear enough, the hanging strips around it, designed to attract attention make that patently obvious.

He feels almost offended that people think anyone with half a brain would fall for that.

But just because you know it’s a trap, doesn’t mean you can’t still get caught.

Furiosa exits the cab, and he lets her. She seems certain, besides he’s not her keeper. He keeps a wary eye on the surroundings though, and tenses when he sees motocycles ride out from the distance. Hangs back when the wives and Nux start to exit the cab.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, who knows if they really accept Furiosa.

It seems clear though. They hug, no bangs or screams, or blood occurs.

The older Vuvalini are old. But they have some of the memories that Max himself has, and he wonders if perhaps he is not as mad as he thinks.

They are smart, and capable, and it’s reassuring to know that should he leave now, he would not even be missed. The Vuvalini are more than able to look after themselves, to help teach the wives.

But he has nowhere to go, and night is coming, and the green place is dead. It feels wrong to take off now.

* * *

The Vuvalini are pointing satellites out to the wives, who stare at them in wonder.

Max had never stared at a satellite in wonder, they had just been ordinary, barely blips on his radar. He remembers times when the stars could scarcely be seen across the backdrop, and when you could talk to anyone you wanted to at just the push of a button.

Even the oldest of the Vuvalini don’t seem to really remember this though, the way they talk like some far off long forgotten, scarcely remembered in the first place memory of their youth.

Furiosa had said she had been taken 7000 days ago, plus the ones she didn’t remember. A year is 365 days he thinks, that’s 20 years.

Max remembers having a family before this all begun. But he’s not old now.

His memories don’t seem to fit with everyone else’s, how many years ago did this begin? Nobody else seems to use years. Maybe he made them up.He must be mad, because if he’s not, then everyone else has to be.

Or maybe this is just like how he rode on the back of a car during a sandstorm.

* * *

They want to ride across the salt plains, Furiosa is offering him a bike. He’s not one for company really anymore, so it’s no great hardship to say he wants to make his own way.

Besides, he’s been out on the salts.

He’s not sure what he is, but he’s not like anyone else. So he figured he’d try his luck out on the salts.

He rode for days, until he ran out of fuel. And then he walked. He was out of water, he walked until he could walk no more, and then he crawled.

He walked until his vision yellowed and blackened and turned into spots.

And then he kept walking.

There was nothing out there. Not a speck of life, not a single thing on the horizon.

n o t h i n g

Eventually he’d had to venture back. He lost count of how long it was until he’d reached his car again, abandoned in the salts, far enough that nobody would touch it.

His car had been exactly as he’d left it. The tank was dry, but the condition was the same. He’d slept there for a while before venturing on further, promising himself he’d return once he had found some fuel.

He had returned to his car. It had only taken 400 days.

It’s as he’s riding off though, bid farewell to Furiosa, and the Vuvalini, and the Wives, and Nux, that he changes his mind.

Those who he didn’t save plague him, he can’t let them wander off into the salts. They will die. They’re not him.

He hadn’t known how to help them, and he’d let them go in the foolish hope that perhaps he’d just chosen the wrong direction.

But he tells Furiosa what he believes to be true, as he rides his bike in front of them, cutting the group off.

“I guarantee that 160 days ride that way is nothing but salt.”

It’s a fact he _can_ guarantee.

He wants to help them, and he doesn’t need to do much, he just needs to push them around. He had left for fear of getting attached.

He’s not going to just go and let them die though. He’ll get them back to the citadel, and then he’ll leave.

He and his car are better suited to the road.

* * *

Furioso is dying, bleeding out, exsanguinating they say. Air is leaking into her lungs.

He remembers this, stab them in the chest, he remembers thinking it didn’t make sense. He has knowledge that they don’t.

Max just hopes that the Vuvalini don’t’ stop him.

He has blood too, high-octane, universal donor, and he still has the plastic tubing.

He has too many ghosts. Nux now amongst them. Furiosa will not be one of the ones he could not save.

He is not a doctor, but he hopes his blood can save her. He is not a doctor but he has attempted to remedy a collapsed lung. This, he thinks, should kill her.

He is not a doctor, but she is dying on the Fury Road, and here no one is a doctor. He stabs her in the chest and gives her his blood and hopes.

* * *

Once they have taken back the citadel he leaves. Maybe he’ll return one day, but he thinks he needs to be alone.

It is odd knowing he has allies in this world now.

They will run the citadel well, he is sure.

He doesn’t know where he plans to go, not over the salts.

But he finds himself heading to the canyon first, where Immortan Joe died, where Nux was witnessed historic on the Fury Road.

There are ghosts there. But they may be one short.

Max has a boot to return. The Warboy had smaller feet.


End file.
